Saturday, December 26, 2009

Yes, I really do know how to use my oven

I would like the record to reflect that I made homemade cookies this Christmas. The kids helped by making it more of a mess than it would have been already as well as casually throwing some sprinkles and icing on the cookies. They also managed to use the cookie cutters a little while working to eat as much cookie dough as possible. We did cookies a few weeks ago and clearly the novelty has worn off. We did make a lot of them though and we (I) put them into treat bags to give to our neighbors as holiday presents. Mark was kind enough to drop them off, much appreciated since the sidewalks were still pretty narrow and icy.

The nice thing about baking with kids is I can play off my own baking imperfections on them. "Isn't the messy icing and sprinkles a hoot! Meg helped!" I find I do that with other things, too, like if we get out somewhere and I realize an outfit is totally the wrong colors or the pants are on backwards, "Isn't that cute? He dressed himself!" Certainly there are plenty of times when they do insist on wearing shorts over sweatpants, but when it's my fault, I'm more than happy to blame them. If that's not stellar parenting, I'm not sure what is.